Activision Won’t Be On The Show Floor At E3 2019

Activision Won’t Be On The Show Floor At E3 2019

Activision is the latest in a long line of publishers opting to step away from a major presence at E3 2019, as it was recently revealed that the company won’t have a booth at the LA expo.

Final floor plans for the show floor were discovered on ResetEra, (via VG247) that showed the Call of Duty publisher wouldn’t be occupying its usual space. The company later confirmed to GamesIndustrythat it will still be at show doing interviews and press, but won’t be offering any playable games in a traditional booth.

Activision

Activision has skipped out in E3 twice before now, most recently 2016. The publisher as never held its own press conference like Bethesda or Ubisoft, either, and tends to rely on the Sony and Microsoft shows to share announcements and updates on its latest releases.

Of course, this year Sony is also stepping out on E3 to do its own thing, leaving Microsoft as the only one of the big three console manufacturers with a traditional press conference. Whether we’ll see anything from Activision at the Xbox show remains to be seen, but this generation the company has mostly looked to Sony’s PlayStation shows to share news, so who can say?

It makes sense that Activision wouldn’t want to spend money on a booth at E3 this year, especially given that it doesn’t seem to have much to show off. Sekiro is out and a massive success, Crash Team Racing launches a week after the event so it’d be pointless to promote that too much at this stage, and it no longer has control of Destiny.

Activision

That leaves Call of Duty 2019, which is usually revealed at events specifically put together by Activision. We’d previously heard that the latest game would be announced by June 30 at the latest though, with a reveal expected before E3 kicks off in mid June.

As such, it’s something of a surprise to learn that the game won’t be playable at E3 – at least to the public.

As for the other companies who’ve sat out E3 2019? EA will be hosting its annual EA Play event, and Nintendo will be holding the now-traditional Nintendo Direct show. Sony has yet to share its plans, but expect a State of Play livestream to take place around the time E3 is happening.

Ewan Moore

Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn't gotten out of his mid 00's emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.